Burden of Light: The Emissary of Divine Light Myth System as a Unifying Community Force

This article was published  in Communal Societies: Journal of the Communal Studies Association, Vol 30, Issue 2, 2010.

Burden of Light: The Emissary of Divine Light Myth System as a Unifying Community Force

SANDY JENSEN

I.  “And the truth shall make you free”

It rained all the long, green spring of 1975 in the Catskill Mountains of New York.  Morning after morning, week after week, month after month until three months had passed, and the heat of summer persuaded us into Sand Lake to swim, I sat with thirty or forty other people in a log cabin classroom listening to the audio tapes of Lloyd Arthur Meeker, aka Uranda, and Martin Cecil, later Exeter, the first and second bishops of the Emissaries of Divine Light (EDL).  That year marked the fall of Saigon to the Communists and American defeat in Viet Nam. I had no notion of these events, nor any other previous events like Watergate and the near-impeachment of Richard Nixon. I had already been in the Emissary cocoon since 1972 and would remain safely under wraps there until 1992.

After finishing my BA at the University of Washington, I, along with my parents, two sisters, my brother, and assorted friends, joined EDL, lured by the spellbinding voice and spiritual logic of EDL’s all-time most successful recruiter, George Emery.  By this rainy spring I had already attended both a one-week orientation seminar and the one month “Short Class” at Canadian headquarters in 100 Mile House, BC.  I had lived in communal houses in Portland, OR, and Oakland, CA, attending nightly “services” or group gatherings, working as a waitress and as a cook to earn money for this culminating experience in the spiritual education of any Emissary of that era, the three-month “Long Class.”

When I refer to Long Class now, I call it “my wonderful brainwashing.”  The issue of possible brainwashing was addressed straightforwardly at the time; yes, our brains were being washed in the water of truth. Frankly, I can’t remember when I enjoyed “truth” more, but I have come to learn since that time that there is emotional truth and factual truth, and they don’t necessarily taste the same meal with the same set of taste buds.  “Yum-yum,” said my appetite in 1975.  I now think there may have been too much air in the meringue, but I’m now cooking with a different set of mental ingredients in my pantry.

What we were learning in Long Class was the Emissary creation story.  Stories, of course, are a time-honored vehicle for conveying mythological truth.  These stories told us who we were, where we came from, and what our place and responsibilities in the world were. Attached to each piece of the deep story was a foundational principle, which taught us how to manage our emotional lives, how to live together in peace, how to think about the world, how to create together, and how to value ourselves in relation to leadership.  This story and its truths are the Emissary Heaven and the Emissary Earth.  The principles and the applications that flow out of them are the foundation of the Emissary house of being. EDL’s historic success as a utopian movement is based on its mythological strength.  With the weakening of that substrate in recent generations, I’m not sure EDL can survive as a utopian ideology without a miracle at the level of myth.

Visitors to the beautiful communal Emissary properties (called “units”) in the decades prior to 1990 often asked residents what united them.  For example, I read Michael Cummings’s account in the 1995 Communities Directory in which he concludes that the best explanation for Emissary success is “[their] own explanation . . . the shared spiritual experience of seeking the natural design in life itself.”[i] He, like others before him, have found this and other Emissary statements  “like nailing Jell-O to the wall” because the phraseology doesn’t appear to be a strong enough engine to pull the impressive train of Emissary achievement.  But why would people of such evident integrity not tell the truth about so important a matter?

Of course, they did tell the truth, but the truth is loaded with code.  The key word in the quote “the natural design of life” is “life.”  In the Emissary pantheon, Martin Exeter, who held a hereditary and legal place in the British House of Lords, also had a spiritual and mythological position as the Lord of Life.  Coming into alignment with the “natural design of life” then, meant looking steadfastly to Martin (or his spiritual representative, a “focalizer”) for cues as to what that “design” might be exactly.  Fortunately for just about all concerned, Martin’s ideas were benign rather than cruel; in point of fact, they were upper class, English values of good manners:  of integrity in business, of keeping a stiff upper lip in the face of adversity, ignoring bad feelings, acting generously, being kind, respecting your superiors, and knowing and keeping your place.  All this was salted down with Uranda’s metaphysical mix of ancient Egyptology, “Christian Science, Americanized Hinduism, watered-down theosophy, 7th Day Adventistism, and Noyes’ s Perfectionism.”[ii] The combination of Martin’s English values and Uranda’s  became a potent brew served up in the Long Class curriculum as the divinely inspired history of the universe.

This education in EDL mythology was deep in the minds and hearts of all the core members of what is referred to as “the ministry.”  All the languaging of their day-to-day lives sounds echoes of this primary story, in which each and every person could find a personal point of identification.  To be told the story in Long Class was not to hear it for the first time, but, as Socrates also said to his students, “to remember” it.  “The Holy Spirit calls all things to remembrance,” we found out, and we listened, entranced, to what we believed was the restoration of our own lost memories.  What a delicious, innocent state of mind that was. How clearly I remember those amniotic days, the rhythmic sound of Uranda’s compelling voice, and the long, green rain that was the spring of 1975 in the Catskills.

III. But first, a history lesson: The Visionary and the Lord

In 1907 and 1909, two men were born and would be raised in the extreme social opposites of poverty and wealth.

Lloyd Arthur Meeker, born 1907, was the poor one of the two men; rock-scrabble, homesteader, hand-to-mouth poor. His strict Seventh Day Adventist father beat him regularly. Like many visionaries, he had an early life beset with childhood diseases like pneumonia, flu and malnutrition. But young Lloyd was out in the world doing dairy work in 1925, later riding the freight trains east to Fort Scott, Kansas.

Lloyd found a good job that lasted three years, then the job disappeared with the stock market crash of 1929-30. By that time he had a wife and child and had purchased a house, which he lost. The little family migrated to Nashville and survived on odd jobs. Lloyd read psychology books and attended free lectures, collecting ideas and concepts from the spiritual supermarket that characterized public debate in the nascent New Age of the 1930s.

Over the span of four days, Sept. 12-15, 1932, Lloyd had a series of three mystical experiences, which he felt wiped his psychic and psychological plate clean and rebirthed him as a new and original man.

During the dawn hours, as he was writing his morning thoughts, “I found myself letting go into a deeper relaxation than I had ever known. Gradually, the room filled with a silvery cloud of light, in which all objects were blotted from my view. Enfolded in that cloud, I became aware of a Presence, and an indescribable peace penetrated my entire being.

“I began to write, a word at a time. As fast as one came, the next appeared, as if by magic…And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped…The cloud disappeared. I…found, amazingly, the answers to questions that had been in my mind and heart for many years….

“I felt that my whole being glowed, from some inner light, and thought it must be that an angel from heaven had visited me. ‘But this,’ I whispered… ‘was not something outside myself. These words came from somewhere inside of Me’” [iii]

Each of these three events lasted about three hours. On Sept. 16, 1932, Lloyd changed his name to Uranda (a name he said meant “One who lets the light of Christ shine forth”), and initiated what he and everyone else associated came to call “The Ministry,” not yet called The Emissaries of Divine Light, but that name would point back at this revelatory beginning.

Uranda began teaching classes based on Bible studies and astrology. The three day white light experience changed his personality into that of a charismatic speaker. Much altered now from a man constantly dealing with physical ailments, although these would recur throughout his life, he became a healer, taking on patients. The healing modality he developed, attunement, is still widely practiced today[iv]

Uranda and his growing band of followers eventually bought Sunrise Ranch in Dec. 1945 for $6000; 123 acres of dry farmland in Colorado not far from Loveland. History shows these people lived the down-in-the-dirt pioneer life as the first Emissary intentional community.

Uranda’s story ended July 1954 when he and four others were killed when their light plane went down in San Francisco Bay.

Substantially before Uranda died, Martin Cecil (later 7^th Marquess of Exeter) and he had met and begun to work together. Martin’s story could not be more diametrically opposed to Uranda’s. He was born into the British peerage system; his father was the Fifth Marquess of Exeter. For those who want to brush up on their Shakespeare, the famous Cecil peerage line began during Queen Elizabeth I’s reign with William Cecil, Lord High Treasurer, her chief advisor and counselor.

Martin was born a younger son in palatial Burghley House, one of England’s grandest homes, still open to the touring public.[v] Martin went to Dartmouth Royal Navy College at age 13, where he studied engineering and served on the battleship Queen Elizabeth. The formality and English class system both came into EDL in 1940 when Martin met Uranda at a Vancouver, B.C. meeting. Martin had come out to 100 Mile House, B.C. in 1930 to manage the family’s Canadian 15,000 acre cattle ranch,[vi] originally purchased in 1912.

Martin was a pioneer in his own right—1930s interior BC was still waiting for water and electricity to be brought in. Martin took correspondence classes in “architecture, plumbing, wiring, etc.” (35), hauled lumber and built 100 Mile House Lodge with its small Log Chapel.

Martin became not only a builder and hotelier but a cattleman, as well. “He soon found himself vice-president of the Caribou Stockmen’s Association in 1934. By 1937, the cooperative marketing method initiated by that body was adopted throughout British Columbia and beyond as the means of survival for the industry” (37). He also acted as postmaster and as an agent for Imperial Oil station. His intellectual interests tended toward Rosicrucianism at the time he connected with Uranda. He was married and his son, Michael, was a four year old at that crucial juncture. Later, Michael married Uranda’s daughter Nancy Rose Meeker, which consolidated the Emissary domain through marriage.

When Uranda died, Martin took the reins of an expanding Emissary empire that would inflate with wild abandon with the 1970s and 80s influx of community minded people of all ages from all over the world. Martin died in 1988, and a period of chaos and reconfiguration ensued; however, the Emissaries of Divine Light are still very much active into the 21^st century.[vii]

III. The Deep Story

To understand the Emissary myth system, you must first draw a mental baseline between Orion and the Pleiades.  Triangulate both of them to the point where the sun now burns.  I don’t know who created the sun, or how, but Orion represents masculine forces and the Pleiades represent “the sweet influences” of the feminine that were brought to play during the creation of Sol/Sun.

In this heuristic, human relationships are like the sun and its revolving planets, like atoms and their electrons, for don’t men likewise have women and children revolving around them?  As an argument by analogy, I wouldn’t let my students get by with this for five seconds, but nonetheless, this is presented and accepted as a powerful, central analogy.  In Long Class this analogy, called the Principle of Focalization, is extended outward into space, backward into history, and inward into social structures and everyday decision-making.

At the center of the universe (our own, local universe; presumably, multiple universes having not existed when this mythology was born) in the Center of Centers, dwells an all-powerful, all-loving, sentient, supremely radiant god-being. All galaxies revolve around this divine centrality, a gleaming orrery hovering in the delicate balances of outer space. [viii]

At the local level of our solar system, we were told, there is a magnificent metropolis holding all the planets in its loving embrace.  The “City of the Sun” is a golden city of burning gases that houses the disincarnate god-beings, brilliant angels of light for this solar system, many of them waiting to be incarnated on earth.  The radiance of the physical sun proves to us their unhindered, radiant, all-loving presence.   A hierarchy of great god-beings rules them wisely.  Ra is the name of the Supreme One, the LORD of LORDS and the KING of KINGS (caps are mandatory).  He incarnated only once on Earth as Jesus Christ.  He won’t incarnate again until Emissaries have prepared the way for the next millennium, the “Restoration of Man.”  The consort of the Lord of Lords is the Queen of Heaven; she incarnated with Jesus as Mary Magdalene.

Ra is also the Lord of Love, the apex point of a triumvirate vital to Earth.  Standing side by side and below him are two other Lords, the Lord of Truth and the Lord of Life.  The Lord of Life incarnated as John the Baptist, and as Martin Exeter most recently.   The Lord of Truth incarnated as John, the Beloved Disciple, and others, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, on his way to being Uranda.   Uranda, Lord of Truth, has the special quality of a sort of spiritual toughness; whenever the climate for spiritual regeneration of humans, whom he loved to call the “children of men,” seems favorable, the Lord of Truth can incarnate.  Both the sword and water are associated symbolically with him.

To get a clearer image of how the Lords operate, think of a tray of random iron filings.  Place a magnet underneath the tray, and a pattern begins to form along the lines of magnetism.  A Lord draws people and events to him like iron filings gravitate to a magnet. This analogy is considered to demonstrate the validity of the Principle of Focalization.  People or “Responding Ones,” line up around the personal spiritual magnetism of the focalizer, whether that person is organizing a dish washing crew or giving a service at a local center.

Individuals in alignment with the hierarchy have their own magnetic field of influence.  The chain of command begins at the top with a Lord; for example, Martin Exeter, the Lord of Life.  His designated focalizers focus the “Spirit of Life,” which he teaches; he himself focuses and receives divine guidance from the disincarnate Lord of Love.  The word “God” is used only as a verbal shorthand for members, or for the easy understanding of outsiders. The word “focalizer” was replaced by the word “coordinator” at a certain historic point, but the root concept is essential for any study of decision-making or organizational practices in the EDL communities.

As you can see, Jesus, Uranda, and Martin are named the primary godhead for this planet, dead or alive, as it were. Their radiant personal spirits are considered large enough to encompass the spiritual regeneration of anyone on Earth.  No matter who you are, you are less than these Great Ones.  The privilege of the individual human (read:  incarnate sun-being) is to become consciously aware of their existence, conscious of one’s own divine nature, and conscious of the Emissaries as the vehicle of spiritual restoration for the planet.  This matter of being conscious is considered in this cosmology to come to focus in Michael Exeter, who was referred to by his father as the Spirit of the Son of Man.

I don’t mention the spiritual identities of the women because, although this was a matter of speculation, this is clearly a man’s world.  In brief, the role of the wife or lover [ix] of a male focalizer is to emotionally represent the people in the man’s field of influence.  This representation may take the form of delivering an impassioned verbal “response” after he has read one of Martin’s services to a group, or she might also bring the “response of the field” to him in their sexual unions.  These are only two of the many gender-specific implications of the principle of focalization.

To consider the Emissary deep story from another angle, we have to go back in history to the beginning of the Earth.  Once upon a time, goes this rather beautiful creation myth of magical science, seven major god-beings were sent out from the City of the Sun to the empty space that will become the third planet. The Elohim, for that was their name, sang and danced, whirling about in space until they set the vibrational foundations of the Earth. Through their love, Earth came into being.  The fiery core of the new Earth was not the iron and magma of primeval volcanism, but the radiant whirling of the Elohim. First they created water, and next they created air.  The action of air across the water caused the dry land to appear, and the fire of the sun entered the mix.  This procession of water, air, earth, and fire is directly related to another vital Emissary principle known as the Four Forces, knowledge of which is used on a day-by-day basis in virtually every aspect of decision-making.

It may seem at this point that even with some elementary geology missing, this view is attempting to approach the realm of scientific reality.  Not at all; Emissary cosmology has no use for any science that is skeptical of their two approved “scientists,” Immanuel Velikovsky and James Churchward.  The works of these two maverick scholars validate the literal existence of the EDL creation myth.  Up through the 80s science was still held in deep suspicion, as were all methods that involved critical thinking. If a technology that was applied science served the Emissaries or humankind well, it was considered to be divinely or spiritually conceived, with “mind under the control of spirit.”

For example, at this point in the creation story, a study of evolution might fit nicely, but Emissaries do not believe in evolution. Even in the 80s, Martin taught against evolution in his worldwide satellite broadcast services.  It is old guard Emissaries who are most deeply steeped in the creationist lore, and hence, they are the ones who have not chosen to follow evolutionary science over the past decades. Unaware of research into the fossil record, they have not published a formal, systematic “refutation” of this fascinating data.  As individuals they don’t have to think about it, and so don’t, living like many a generation before them with the comfort and instruction of their own mythology.

The god-beings alighted on the new Earth in the legendary land of Lemuria. Emissaries validate the literal existence of a historic Lemuria through the writings of 1930s speculative cryptographer and pseudo-archeologist, James Churchward. These angels did not have human form and lived in a hierarchical society characterized by a super-potent creativity.  It was they who played the adamic role of further creation.  As I imagined it, an angel or group of angels would fall into a creative rapture, a fine, light concentration, conceiving, say, the idea of iris, the entire iris genus and its species.  Because the angels were pure in heart, once they turned their attention elsewhere, the iris thought-form remained in existence, ready to incarnate into physical form, every iris a reflection of this original, invisible iris blueprint.  This powerful creative potency is considered the birthright of Emissaries, and explains the emphasis on creativity so often observed in Emissary communities.[x]

In this way, the visible world of form came into being.  An important inclusion among the animals was a simian creature developed to serve the angels.  I’m a little hazy on the details here, but something like this happened: the group of angels on the development team got so entranced with the beautiful, complex object of their creation that they became transfixed by it.  Objects of creation became autonomous only when the creator(s) looked away, or released them from consciousness.  This group couldn’t look away, an act considered the model for all future human self-centeredness.  Once merged with this creature beyond a certain point, they were trapped and couldn’t get out.  This is the origin of humans and explains why we are half-animal, half-spirit beings.  It also explains what is called the Fall:  unencumbered god-beings fell into the human cycles of life and death.[xi]

The ramifications of the Fall shook the Earth.  The true orbit of the Earth had been relying on the spiritual stability of the pure angelic hosts.  The primary Earth Lords got together for a council to decide what to do, as clearly a major catastrophe was in the offing.  As they sorted matters, they also realized that some angels would never be of the divinely genetic variety to incarnate on Earth, but must live eternally in the City of the Sun, so many million god-beings in the sun would balance so many on Earth, with a certain percentage at all times coming and going, maintaining the vibrational solar balance.[xii]

The concern of the council was their understanding that if the whole contingent stayed on Earth, they could mediate the consequences of the invention of humans.  However, Emissaries have a corollary principle called the One Law, which states that divine radiation of love will engender response (remember those iron filings responding to the electromagnet).  The result is “unified radiation.”  Lots of things can go wrong with this in action, and Emissaries love to discuss the working of “The Law” in everything from the laundry to world affairs.  In this context, it meant that the newly created humans should experience the full consequences of wrongdoing.  That could only happen if the pure angels withdrew their protective presence, effectively evacuating the Garden of Eden.

Various decisions were made about who was to go and who was to stay and what other protective measures should be taken.  To steady the Earth somewhat when the catastrophe came, the Great Pyramid was built as well as the Sphinx.  The Sequoias in California established a vital spiritual lifeline with the Cedars of Lebanon.  The human-type people in Lemuria were organized into seven tribes and set out over the seas in different directions to populate the Earth.

When everything was set, a pattern of creative triangles (a principle worth further discussion, especially under the category of gender relations) was organized among those not staying.  Under the leadership of the Lord of Lords, with all those in the hierarchy below in agreement, the angels staged a mass ascension, regarded by Emissaries as the saddest day in the history of the world. They all returned to the sun.

As a result of this drastic withdrawal of god-beings, the entire continent of Lemuria submerged under the Pacific.[xiii] Without Lemuria, the planet became unbalanced and whirled off its axis, reestablishing a new axis a little left of center.  To Emissaries, this reflects a spiritual misalignment, too, and they look forward to the day when their collective spiritual radiance shifts the Earth back to its original axis.  The millennial belief is a conviction that Earth can be restored to its Edenic state and made safe for the return of the Lord of Lords.

This mythology explains the nature and origins of humans.  I have presented only the outline of the deep story; it has layers of detail.  However, other versions exist that seem to draw on a separate set of assumptions.  The story of woman being taken from Adam’s rib has been the subject of more than one service.  In another context, Martin says, “[God] put man here on earth and He created man to have dominion here on earth, under the dominion of God.”[xiv] It is never really clear to anyone who God is versus the Lord or the god-beings.  Definitions slip around.[xv]

The story continues.  Humans are in a mess, but the people in the sun certainly don’t want to write Earth off. Every once in a while they send the Lord of Truth on a reconnaissance incarnation.  I understand he tried to get something started in the early Orient, but I never got any details (there may not be any).  For all intents and purposes, history takes up again in the days of Abraham and Moses.  The efforts of Moses to get the Israelites out of Egypt and into the Promised Land were the First Sacred School.  When the Red Seas parted, the planet Venus was making its flyby preparatory to taking up solar orbit (see Velikovsky’s Worlds in Collision, debunked now in every detail by recent science). The rules of the First Sacred School were very simple, based on what is called the physical plane.  All the Israelites had to do was physically relocate themselves and obey the rules and regulations.  Obey the dictates of leadership–that’s all there was to saving the world. It was finally under Solomon, who just couldn’t keep law and order among his women, that the First Sacred School failed.

Next was the Second Sacred School with the Lord of Love himself incarnating as Jesus.  The requirements of this School were based on the mental plane.  People had to understand Jesus’ teachings, mentally acknowledge who he was, and consciously align themselves with his ministry.  We all know what happened to this ill-fated mission.  The only twist Emissaries give to the crucifixion scene is to say he didn’t die on the cross; he fell into a coma after saying, “Darkness, darkness covers my face, ” not “Why hast thou forsaken me?”  (The Master would never have felt betrayed by God).  In the tomb, he wakes up and begins the process of ascension.  In this process one is in such intense spiritual alignment that all flesh and bone is consumed by the cool flame of spirit.  While he is still betwixt and between worlds, he rolls away the stone.  His famous “touch me not” line is because it’s somehow dangerous to people to make contact during ascension.  He appeared to the usual people, then ascended completely, for the first time proving that if he can do it, there is the possibility of others doing it, too, in the future–an important promise.

Of course, it was very evil of humans to crucify Christ and to interrupt the creative cycle of the Second Sacred School.  The One Law came into play again.  Christ was gone, but the vibrational momentum of his ministry carried on without him, culminating in the global catastrophes of the two World Wars.  Into the quiet after that storm came Lloyd Arthur Meeker, aka Uranda, who, with the establishment of the Emissaries of Divine Light in 1932 and the purchase of Sunrise Ranch in 1945, initiated the Third Sacred School based on the spiritual plane.  The divine blueprint for the Third Sacred School was drawn up in 98 AD by Christ’s disciple, John the Beloved, while a prisoner on the island of Patmos.  You’ll remember that John was one of Uranda’s own incarnations. He wrote the book of Revelation, a primary document for the development of the Third Sacred School, according to Martin.[xvi]The Old and New Testaments are the holy texts for the First and Second Sacred Schools; the eighteen volumes of Martin and Uranda’s collected works are labeled gold leaf on blue, The Third Sacred School.  Participants in the Emissary classes are students in this School, as is everyone else involved with the “ministry.”

This far-reaching mythology gives every Emissary an enormous sense of being personally involved in the sweep of human history.  The Emissary ministry takes responsibility for the spiritual regeneration of the entire planet.  Their ultimate goal is to turn the planet into a sun. (!)

Martin added to this story by saying that during the Lemurian days of the Fall, the Earth moved into a  “cloudy” place in space where self-centeredness was an option, which was taken with the invention and propagation of human beings.  We are now moving out of that “cloud” into a galactic region where “human nature,” or evil, self-centeredness, will no longer be possible.  The Emissary body of people who find conscious centering in Martin, or the “Spirit of Life,” will survive this disaster much as Noah’s ark survived the Flood.  Rather than animals two by two being saved, Emissaries will preserve spiritual essences of integrity, sweetness, generosity, and the ability to follow focus, i.e. work with or even obey the focalizer or coordinator.

They are also interested in saving such things as heritage seed, organic gardening techniques, secrets of various so-called Earth mysteries (ley lines, plant devas a la Findhorn, communicating with disincarnate beings, functions of Stonehenge, linear enigma–the list goes on), and other forms of Earth stewardship knowledge useful in the Restoration of Man.  The outsider looking in couldn’t see how deeply pervasive this millennial belief was and perhaps is, nor how thoroughly it informed the motivation for everyday activities and decisions.

The deep story teaches that as angels, humans are radiant spirits.  Both the beginning and the end of the story are in radiance–and we’re back to the One Law:  radiation, response, unified radiation.  Martin radiated through his personal presence and services; the individual responded by speaking, sending money, writing letters, and acting in accordance with the “natural design of life” in every moment; the result was unified radiation appearing as a well-organized, utopian movement peopled by unified, radiant individuals.

IV. The Four Functions of Myth

It is perhaps useful at this point to review Joseph Campbell’s explanation of the four functions of myth in order to shed light on the usefulness of a community mythology to the Emissaries. Campbell says the first function of myth is mystical, “opening the heart and mind, pointing out that the ultimate mystery that we all try to solve lies beyond the range of human thought or naming.”[xvii]A large part of Emissary training is anti-intellectual because it is rightly perceived that no mind in its right mind is going to go for this unusual story–but a believing heart will.  For example, the analysis I am attempting here might be derogatorily referred to by old guard Emissaries as “turning the crank” on the waterwheel of my mind.  The emphasis is on stilling the mind and heart so that the individual can become, in Campbell’s now classic phrase, “transparent to transcendence.”  The Emissary creation myth makes the ultimate mystery mystically available to members.

The second function of myth is cosmological. It takes the science or the knowledge of the day and “presents it as . . . radiant of this transcendent energy.  Turn the whole world into an icon so that it’s radiant.”[xviii]The irony of this in Emissary terms is that the science of the 1930s and 40s changed so quickly.  The “science” of Velikovsky and Churchward were integrated into the cosmic story.  These fine icons glowed with a wonderful radiance even in 1975. I remember being told by Grace Van Duzen not to read Isaac Asimov or Carl Sagan because they didn’t support Velikovsky 100%.

Uranda embraced chiropractic, an emerging healing art of his time, and developed attunements as a spiritual healing art when he and the Christian Scientists and the rest of the world were still questioning the early days of medicine.   Keep in mind that penicillin wasn’t even discovered, for example, until 1928; it was first used successfully in the treatment of disease in 1940, an event Uranda may not have even heard of, let alone predicted the consequences of for public health.[xix]

The science of Uranda’s era got locked in time, preserving beliefs in mythological amber that no longer flowed congruent with the green sap of real time.  Campbell warns that a conflict results when the “structuring of a mythology is conditioned by the science at that time . . ..” That conflict is evident in the internal EDL debates of the 90s.  Campbell feels that “religion has to accept the science of the day and penetrate it–to the mystery.”[xx]I have not yet done enough post-1988 (the year of Martin’s death) research to determine if the major Emissary discussions attempted to integrate current science.  If so, then the old mythology is certainly suffering.

Who is it in EDL who has enough spirit-status to bring the members into a new mythology that will encompass the sweep and wonder of modern science and connect EDL to the great mystery science loves to explain?  “In its encounter with Nature, ” says Carl Sagan, “science invariably elicits a sense of reverence and awe.  The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos . . .. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.”[xxi] I see that the development of such an expansive story has to happen to keep the core spirit of EDL alive, and yet it would require such flexibility in consciousness by old guard Emissaries that a new miracle of understanding would be needed.

And anyway, an old, painful truth remains:  the science of evolution directly contradicts creationist mythologies such as this one.  People trained to take creationism literally can’t be trained to think about it metaphorically without losing their powerful psychic intimacy with godhead.  Joseph Campbell said, “I don’t see any conflict between science and religion,”[xxii]a spiritual and intellectual point of view that perhaps has the magic needed to save a foundering Emissary ark.

The third function of a myth system such as this one is sociological, “validating and maintaining a certain specific social system.”[xxiii] The deep story tells Emissaries who they are.  It tells them who is in charge not just of their social system, but also of their solar system.  Uranda and Martin are the Lords of Truth and Life.  What a privilege to know them, to serve them, to participate in this Divine Design, this great outworking, the Restoration of Man!   Every aspect of everyday life must reflect the messages of the deep story. “It is enough,” says Lloyd Meeker, Uranda’s son, in a poem, “for magic has returned.”[xxiv]

The last of Campbell’s four functions of myth is pedagogical, “the guiding of individuals in a harmonious ways through the inevitable crises of a lifetime . . .. Linking the individual to his society so he feels an organic part of it.”[xxv] The Emissaries see their creation myth as both metaphoric and literal.  It has dozens of linked stories, many of them Biblical, which are used to instruct the young, reassure the old, and provide guidelines for all in attitudes and actions appropriate to an Emissary of Divine Light.  These were presented as services by Uranda and Martin and preserved in both electronic and print media.  There is no crisis severe enough that a service can’t address it and calm one’s soul enough to see your way through.  The services themselves are regarded as radiant icons; through these words one can reconnect with the source of the life pulse itself and its focus point on Earth. Even if a visitor were not aware of these connective tissues, it is thought that just hearing the “tone,” the vibrational immanence of the services, was enough to begin the process of “coming home.”  “Don’t ask any more questions than you have to; just open your heart and feel the presence of home.  Isn’t this what your spirit craves?  The deep story is here, waiting for you to make it your own,”– is the seductive message of the “tone.”

When this central myth system began to be lost, the Emissaries of Divine Light entered a time of crisis.  I believe this began as far back as the late 1970s, when Long Class, already trimmed from six months down to three months, took further cuts down to two months, six weeks, and other shorter chunks of time.  There were practical considerations; after all, who could get three months of time off besides unemployed students, teachers, or (less likely) the independently wealthy?  To attract people in higher income brackets and to accommodate modern career schedules, both the time frames and the curriculum were shortened year by year.  And year-by-year the transference of baseline mythology perceptibly weakened.  I venture to say that much of the story I have outlined above is news to the last couple generations of Emissaries.  They tuned into current services and learned lessons in radiance and alignment with the “natural design of life” from old timers.  Unlike many societies, the old timers don’t pass on the Emissary myths orally; they expect that to be part of the class curriculum and would be surprised and saddened to realize how little of the old arcana was retained in the new trainings of the 80s.[xxvi]

Transference of the deep story dwindled, replaced with emphasis on the primary principles of the One Law, the Four Forces, the Principle of Focalization and Creative Triangulations as metaphors for practical psychological or organizational processes.  Cut off from their glowing roots reaching back to the sun, they became no more than another set of self-help tips.

When Martin died, his son, Michael Exeter, for a short time before he stepped down from EDL leadership, emphasized his own modern, Taoist interests in Earth stewardship and spiritual egalitarianism.  He and others made an effort to routinize the charisma of Martin.[xxvii] That is, by quoting Martin repeatedly and showing his videos, there is an effort to keep the old, successful community dynamics alive.  However, without Uranda and Martin’s truly mythological presences, and without a body of people passionately in love with the deep story, as there had been when Uranda died in 1954, the Motherland of EDL has begun to go under the sea of secular thought like the submersion of Lemuria itself.

Members demanded that EDL come into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in terms of feminism, democracy, developments in the field of psychology, evolution, and medicine.   But it isn’t that easy to bend the amber of mythology.  People left in droves, citing “cognitive dissonance” as the reason.  This included Michael Exeter, for reasons he keeps to himself. Many were people like me who had at one time held the deep story close to their hearts, but who just plain educated themselves out of an interest in, or need for, such a quaint myth.

My friends and I look back at our Emissary years with nostalgia, remembering the manifold pleasures of those truly utopian days.  Uranda promised that if we “ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” we would be shown the back gate out of Eden.  I note with all the regret of a primeval Eve, and all the irony of a secular naturalist of the 21^st century, that he was right.

NOTES

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[i] Communities Directory: A Guide to Cooperative Living (Langley, WA: Fellowship for Intentional Community, 1995), s.v. “A Tale of Two Communes: A Scholar and His Errors” (by Michael Cummings).

[ii] Richard Heinberg, telephone interview by author, June 26, 1996.

[iii] Van Duzen, Grace. The Vibrational Ark. Loveland, CO: Eden Valley Press, 1996, p. 37.

[iv] For example, see: International Association of Attunement Practitioners, http://www.attunementpractitioners.org/ (accessed March 2, 2010), and International Emissaries Attunement Guild, http://www.attunement.org/ (accessed March 2, 2010).

[v] Burghley House, http://www.burghley.co.uk/index.html (accessed March 2, 2010).

[vi] Anthony Cecil, Bridge Creek Estate, http://www.bridgecreek.ca (accessed March 2, 2010).

[vii] Sunrise Ranch, Emissaries of Divine Light, http://www.emissaries.org/ (accessed March 2, 2010).

[viii] This Newtonian vision, of course, appealing as it may be, is complicated by findings that all space matter is moving away from the source of what scientists refer to as the Big Bang. Neither does it include Einsteinian physics, which come more into play in questions of space, time, and at near the speed of light. As an aside, Martin Exeter taught against the testable fact of light speed.  He maintained that “light now is,” presumably as a way to account for the travel of disincarnate god-beings from place to place around the universe.

[ix] Or both wife and lover. The Principle of Creative Triangulations made it permissible for high-status males to have two or more female consorts.  For example, Martin’s entourage was always referred to as “Martin, Lillian, and Grace.”  Lillian Exeter was Martin’s second wife. If someone asked, then Grace Van Duzen was his secretary, which indeed she was.

[x] This idea is Neo-Platonic, a version of Plato’s ideal forms.   I never heard anyone ever mention Plato in this context; however, other aspects of his cave analogy are frequently used.  I’m sure that if Plato’s antecedence were pointed out, the response would be that Plato had insight into reality, or perhaps that Plato was one of Uranda’s incarnations, never that Uranda borrowed from Plato.  Emissaries are responsible for the entire planet, its history, present, and future; the expansive feeling of home that people comment on is very much based on this proprietary attitude.

[xi] As a side note, Uranda felt that humans could become spiritually mature at about age seventy, then live to be a thousand, two thousand, or seven thousand years old.  If they lived right, they could skip physical death and ascend. Bishop Lloyd A Meeker aka Uranda, Servers Training School: The Divine Design of Man, Instruction Papers No. 47 through 93 (Loveland, CO: Universal Institute of Applied Ontology, n.d.), pp. 420+.

[xii] These are finite numbers.  Current Emissary concern with world population is based on the heresy of god-beings having to incarnate on Earth who are not designed for the work.  There are even humans being born who don’t have a god-being.  The New Age refers glibly to “old souls” and “new souls” and “soullessness,” but to Emissaries, overpopulation presents a clear and present danger.

[xiii] I’ve heard Emissaries who visited Hawaii say they felt “essences of the Motherland” there, indicating a belief that the Hawaiian chain is a piece of Lemuria that didn’t sink.

[xiv] Bishop Martin Cecil, The Divine Blueprint (Loveland, CO: Emissaries of Divine Light, n.d.), p. 134.

[xv] I often wondered when I prayed “Dear Lord,” if I were supposed to be praying to Martin, a Sun Lord, or some more amorphous God.

[xvi] Bishop Martin Cecil, The Divine Blueprint (Loveland, CO: Emissaries of Divine Light, n.d.), 1:1.

[xvii] Joseph Campbell, The Hero’s Journey: The World of Joseph Campbell., ed. Phil Cousineau (New York: Harper & Row, 1990), p 162.

[xviii] Campbell, The Hero’s Journey: The World of Joseph Campbell., ed. Phil Cousineau, p. 162.

[xix] In 1979 I was seriously ill with pleurisy and pneumonia–going to the doctor was never once mentioned, even though the illness was keeping me home from my job as secretary for a general surgeon at a major community hospital! I was given attunements and advised to read services.

[xx] Campbell, The Hero’s Journey: The World of Joseph Campbell., ed. Phil Cousineau, p. 164.

[xxi] Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (New York: Random House, 1995), pp. 29-30.

[xxii] Campbell, The Hero’s Journey: The World of Joseph Campbell., ed. Phil Cousineau, p. 164.

[xxiii] Campbell, The Hero’s Journey: The World of Joseph Campbell., ed. Phil Cousineau, p. 165.

[xxiv] Lloyd Meeker and David Ish, The End of Sorrow (San Francisco, CA: Word, 1980), p. 57.

[xxv] Campbell, The Hero’s Journey: The World of Joseph Campbell., ed. Phil Cousineau, p. 167.

[xxvi] At any rate, Martin was still adding details to the millennial myth up until his death.  New members took this as metaphorical; New Age members took this myth as “far out!”; and old timers took it as literal, as Martin meant it to be.

[xxvii] “Charisma, by nature, is unstable.  It can exist in its pure form only as long as the charismatic leader is alive…. For an organization to survive even after the leader’s death or departure, charisma must in some way be perpetuated and made routine.”  William M Kephart and William W Zellner, Extraordinary Groups: An Examination of Unconventional Life-Styles (New York: St. Martin’s, 1994), p. 148.

Bibliography

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